But that's not really a bad thing. The point isn't to read all the writers and think "now I am a Stoic". To actually apply virtue ethics you always have to do some meditations of your own and construct a right way of acting for the time and place. Simply saying to others "I followed the book" like it's a homework assignment doesn't cause that kind of change, and that's going to be the majority of people anywhere, anytime in history.
I looked up the "bomber pilot in Vietnam who kept a copy of Epictetus in the plane" and it appears to be James Stockdale who was apparently a prisoner of war on Vietnam for many years -- which actually does sound like a situation Stoic philosophy would be useful in. Very different than the strawman presented in the comic: "I always carry a copy of Epictetus's work while I'm bombing villages, so I can use his wisdom to make their screams not affect me".
I think the "strawman" hits the nail on the head in that regard.
The article discusses the capture/torture/etc in some significant detail. Search for "unjust war".
In 2023, I think we can achieve a level of control that's incomprehensible to Epictetus. The goal is to maximize equanimity, freedom, and control over one's time/destiny. Money can get you quite far on that path. I sometimes feel that Massimo's just bitter at the success of people like Ryan Holiday (who just took Massimo's work and "packaged" it).
P.S. Warmly recommend this lecture about Marcus Aurelius (a classic): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Auuk1y4DRgk
If you think money gets you a pass, maybe recheck your understanding of the issues and the stoic solution. The shallow packaged version produced by Ryan Holiday isn’t a good source
He has a history of being a BS merchant [1]: he's just found a new angle as a self-help guru.
[1] https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2012/telling-the-t...
The “bad” in actual stoicism lies in a common misinterpretation of classical stoic works as a result of missing context.
The context is that Epictetus et al wrote those works in a time when people were normally ruled by “passions” and did not live under the same expectation of self control and rational action that is expected (rightly or not) of the average person in the modern day.
This contextual disparity leads some people to think that stoicism means to completely abandon emotion and emotional self care. This is not only untrue, it can be deeply harmful.
Classical stoic works need to be read within the passionate context within which they were written to be properly understood.
